


Lifespan

by NervousOtaku (orphan_account)



Series: Tales of a 144 Player Fansession! [39]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Reflection, SBURB Fan Session, Time Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 17:19:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10644477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/NervousOtaku
Summary: Or: Four Years, Seven Months, Three Weeks, Two Days, Nine Hours, Forty-Seven Minutes, And Ten Seconds From The Start





	

The game was about maturity.

It started at an age when life was bound to change, and require trial, error, pain, and suffering to advance. It started at an age when you had to mature, figure out what was important to you.

Erika was sure this age differed for every session.

For _them_ , though, it just happened to be eighteen. Right on the cusp of adulthood, _many_ of them on the _brink_ of moving out of their guardians' homes or advancing in life. Technically an adult, but only in certain aspects of life.

Erika had been planning on not going to college, diving right into the job-field.

She didn't know what everyone had been planning, but she knew that for many, the promised world-building RPG had been a last stab at childishness. Something fun to do before life became hectic, just a little distracting from the looming difficulties ahead.

But SBURB had been _more_ than simply an RPG. It was a touch more... live action. A bit more fatal. Fatal LARPing. FLARPing.

Someone _had_ to have made that _actually_ be a _thing_. It _had_ to be.

Four minutes, seven months, three weeks, two days, nine hours, forty-seven minutes, and ten seconds.

Erika blinked, looking idly out over her planet from atop her house. Despite reaching the seventh gate, it needed to be built up more still. She wasn't sure why still, but it was related to the victory-conditions of the game. Her quest had been solved, Laima appeased with her Choice, and the many parks on the planet had been restored to life, as well as the mines. It had been hard, figuring out what the denizen had meant. But in reflection, yes, both coal-mining and amusement parks destroyed time. Coal was like material history, so mining it was destroying the time encased in it, while Erika knew from experience that the best way to lose track of time was by wandering around an amusement park. But choosing one to close down in order to give more time to the consorts and clean the air of smog... both were vital to the planet. Altering the way time flowed for each thing and syncing them up so that mining actually fueled the parks and the parks made mining more efficient had been almost obvious to her. It was hard to explain everything she'd done, the exact form of her quest and the outcome. Not like Caitlin's cut-and-dry get rid of the ivy with blood. Erika was still impressed with Caitlin's Choice. The options had been to kill Mneme or to sacrifice the cute snake-consorts, but Caitlin had rounded up a small army of doomed iterations and sacrificed them instead, her own life included.

The Choices had to do with maturity. With growing up. Often tightly interwoven with self-sacrifice.

Erika knew that now.

She sighed a little, thinking.

_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick..._

Four years, seven months, three weeks, two days, nine hours, forty-seven minutes, and ten seconds.

The only Time-player who _didn't_ have the problem with knowing every _millisecond_ of time as it passed by, surprisingly, was Caitlin. The Seer of Time. Erika had learned that the other girl suffered from circadian rhythm disorder to the extreme, essentially smashing her internal clock to pieces. Instead of knowing the exact length of someone's lifespan, how long ago it'd been since the last guardian died, or how quick someone's reflexes were, she had to suffer through her visions, sort through the visions of what _had_ happened, what _would_ happen, what _was_ happening, and then sort them into the appropriate timelines.

It had taken her two years, ten months, one week, six days, thirteen hours— _stop_.

Erika shook her head.

It was easy to get lost in time. For her especially.

Three years, one month, two weeks, four days, eight hours, twenty minutes, and fifty-three seconds since they entered the game.

Getting up, Erika decided to go visit one of the amusement parks shining happily in the clear air. And the air was clear, no longer tasting of grit and dirt on the tongue. She was proud of herself for that.

As she walked— it would be faster to fly by ten min— _stop_ — Erika saw ChinaRatsprite messing around with ZombieCatsprite, Okaminasprite, and SecuriTeddysprite. Or maybe ZombieCatsprite and Okaminasprite were chasing her sprite and SecuriTeddysprite was trying to break it up. ChinaRat was still a rat, and ZombieCat and Okamina were a cat and a dog respectively.

She'd set ChinaRatsprite free a while ago— four months, three days, nine hours, seven minutes, and fifty-three seconds ago, to be exact. She just... had a good enough grip on the game, plus god-tiering, that... the sprite wasn't needed anymore.

At least half of the sprites had been set free. Some of the free sprites still behaved as though they weren't, though. Nymphiesprite. Okaminasprite. Securitysprite. Jewelsprite. DMMobiussprite. The ones that were embedded in the lives of their players. Nymphiesprite had been made with Andie's corpse. Okaminasprite had adopted the roll of Caitlin's father thanks to his initial prototyping with her stuffed animal. Securitysprite had been a guard for Pygmalion prior to his prototyping, and considered that his primary function now. Jewelsprite was half family-heirloom, and that had apparently overwhelmed something in the jellyfish's prototyping, attaching it to Devon. DMMobiussprite... well, Erika didn't know why the axolotl-D&D manual was so fond of Erika. Maybe because of Mobius, the pet axolotl. A mystery never to be solved, perhaps.

Erika hummed as she strolled into the nearest park.

It was easy to get _lost_ in this game. It was easy to _forget_ what they were aiming for. But Erika liked to think she still had a clear view of what they were doing.

Four years, seven months, three weeks, two days, nine hours, forty-seven minutes, and ten seconds.

“Page! Page! Page! Page! Page!” the gecko-like consorts began chorusing as Erika came into the park, dancing around ecstatically. They were a lot like little children.

“Hey there, everybody!” she greeted cheerfully, patting any head within reach to appease the tap-dancing crowd. “Having fun today?”

“Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun!” they chanted, bouncing eagerly about.

“Awesome! Any rides I should go on?”

“Roller-coaster!” “Merry-go-round!” “Zipper!” “Ferris wheel!” “Games!” “Viking boats!” “Tea-cups!”

Erika nodded, smiling the entire time. “Those all sound great! I'll have to try hitting them all!” she declared after eight seconds of babbled suggestions. Chances were she _could_ hit all of them. She didn't have anything to do otherwise, really. Jonas's portion of the frog-breeding was all done for the time being, he just needed to wait for the next batch to come in from other players and would call her then.

But until he did, Erika saw no reason not to goof off a bit.

Four years, seven months, three weeks, two days, nine hours, forty-seven minutes, and ten seconds.

It was easy to get lost, to lose sight of what they were fighting _for._

But that was the point.

Get lost. Fall down. Get back up. Get back to work.

Four years, seven months, three weeks, two days, nine hours, forty-seven minutes, and ten seconds.

Four years, seven months, three weeks, two days, nine hours, forty-seven minutes, and ten seconds into the game, they would claim the reward they'd been promised, and build a new universe of their own.


End file.
